Public Health Dialogues hosts Fred Brason to speak on the community-based opioid overdose prevention program – Project Lazarus

The fourth session of the Public Health Dialogues Speaker Series will take place at 12:15 p.m. on Friday, December 5, in Room 1905 of HSC North.  

Fred Brason is the executive director of Project Lazarus in North Carolina.  Project Lazarus is a comprehensive, community-based opioid overdose prevention program.  Brason provides management, education and tools that individuals, medical providers, law enforcement, schools and communities can use to tighten supply, reduce demand and provide harm reduction to save lives from the misuse, abuse and diversion of prescription opioid drugs.

The Project Lazarus public health model is based on the idea that drug overdose deaths are preventable and that communities are ultimately responsible for their own health. There are five model components, including community activation and coalition building, monitoring and epidemiologic surveillance, prevention of overdoses through medical education and other means, use of rescue medication to reverse overdoses by community members and evaluation of project components.  The last four steps to operate in a cyclical manner, with community advisory boards playing the central role in developing and designing each aspect of the intervention.

The Public Health Dialogues Speaker Series is sponsored by the Office of Public Health Practice and Workforce Development within the WVU School of Public Health.  Doors will open in the Health Sciences Center at noon and Speaker Series is expected to run until 1:30 p.m.   The series is free and open to the public.

Those interested in attending should RSVP at SPH-Dialogues@hsc.wvu.eduby December 2, to reserve a complimentary lunch.